Not fascinating at all. Lame story, terrible direction. The main character Lino (Vítor Norte) is presented as a cold, pretentious clerk, who suddenly receives a country property as an heritage and immediately gets excited because his money problems are solved. Once there, he acts mystic, inserted in a impetuous voyage through the family past, the country's history and myths told by everyone who seems to face his way. Every layer of this regression is very confusing, and I didn't understand which details explained that spirit haunting. The reason I say the potential was lost : the excess that leads this film. Excess of actors, excess of past stories, excess of dialog, excess of sound tracks, excess of surreal characters with no further approach than a slight meaningless appearance (the medium lady, the travesty, the mysterious girl on the farm...) This character, played by the beautiful actress Ana Moreira, seems to hold a secret. But there's not much information in her, just a sudden and unexplainable feeling for Lino. And it's not interesting to see her dark beauty, crossing the night involved in a mysterious phantasmagoric figure ending up as the young little summerier sailboat friend, who could be just any other young woman. The prostitute is another character who was not solved: what does the resemblance mean? Lots of questions left in in this film. In spite of it, has, at some points, a cinematography that holds attention. But nothing is quite "fascinating" here.
Review of The Fascination
